Hat’s all, folks

It’s wedding season. I’ve remembered this partly because in our June issue we’ve got lovely wedding fashions for blushing guests, and I helped to choose the pictures, and partly because I’m going to two big, country weddings next month.

And while I can probably cobble something together to wear from the back of my wardrobe, and avoid spending money I don’t have on a dress I’ll never wear (which has happened every time I’ve ever bought clothes for an event – within five minutes of walking out of the shop, I instantly loathe the new item), I have yet again slammed full force into the Hat Dilemma.

Every wedding I’ve ever attended – and there’s been a lot, including two of my own – has required me to make decisions about head-wear. When I was the bride, it was fine. No hats, I just stuck some flowers in my precarious up-do, and I was ready to go. But as a guest, there are no rules any more.

Once, wearing a hat was a given. In the same way you didn’t turn up in ripped jeans and a Bon Jovi T-shirt, no woman ever went hatless to a wedding. I blame Andie MacDowell’s hat in Four Weddings for the change. It was so vast, it instantly rendered the whole idea of wedding hats ridiculous, and everyone turned immediately to fascinators. And after that, it seemed perfectly natural to go from a few bits of diamante and feather in your hair to wearing nothing at all. (In your hair, I mean. I’m not attending that kind of wedding.)

But while I still feel disrespectful and weird without a hat to finish my outfit, with one, at 5ft 2, I feel like a trundling mushroom. I once went to my friends’ wedding in a straw cloche hat, which offset my 1920s’ Downton look beautifully, I thought. But during the reception I developed a terrible headache, which paracetamol wouldn’t shift, and decided I must go home. It was only as I removed my hat to get in the taxi that the terrible band of migraine-like pain eased, and I realised it was purely the tightness of the hat-band causing the agony.

So I’m still undecided about whether to go hat or no hat for these weddings. But bearing in mind that one involves Scottish country dancing, I might go for an Andie MacDowell sized number that covers my eyes. At least that way, I’ll have an excuse for getting all the steps wrong.

You can win a gorgeous Jacques Vert fascinator in the June issue of Candis! Subscribe here